Erdoğan's Game Plan For The West

I am writing this piece in Moscow on my way to Beijing from Copenhagen, where I gave a speech at the Danish parliament to a large group of guests composed of ambassadors, politicians, academics, businessmen, civil society representatives and journalists.

Almost everyone is curious about where Turkey is heading under the authoritarian rule of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and if the country is drifting away from the European Union ideal. Well, I am not sure. But I think it is only the economy that will decide this matter. If Erdoğan can manage the economy while going more authoritarian and being increasingly anti-Western, he will not hesitate to be more authoritarian. It is becoming increasingly obvious that he has a state-centric mind and his state is a Hobbesian-Machiavellian leviathan. This means that in this political imagination, with a positivistic Austinian understanding of law, whatever the ruler says is the law and the ruler is bound only by himself, not by any natural law, universal standards, human rights, international obligations, ethics or morality.

As long as the economy performs well and the majority of the people are happy, others will be treated as second-class sub-citizen dhimmis (non-Muslim citizens of an Islamic state). If you read what Erdoğan's fatwa-giver, Professor Hayrettin Karaman, wrote in the pro-government and staunchly pro-Erdoğan daily Yeni Şafak a few months ago, you may quite possibly be able to read Erdoğan's mind. Karaman was saying that if the majority is not happy with the ways and lifestyles of the minority, then the minority has to make the sacrifice and should follow the ways and lifestyles of the majority in the public sphere, a la Jürgen Habermas and his theory of public space. Karaman relies on Majalla, the Ottoman civil code that was written in the conditions of the 19th century and has to be reinterpreted on these issues. Thus, we can say that as long as the economy performs well, this is what Karaman's Ottomanist student Erdoğan has in mind. There is a slight difference from the Ottoman system, though. In Erdoğan's country, not all Muslims will be regarded as first-class citizens. Heterodox Alevis will continue to be second class, and even practicing Sunni Muslims who do not obey Erdoğan or who criticize him, such as the Hizmet volunteers, will be not only treated as second-class citizens, but there will also be efforts to eliminate them, as Karaman stated in another fatwa. Karaman wrote that for the sake of the state, groups and individuals may be sacrificed. Karaman even mentioned former Grand Unity Party (BBP) leader Muhsin Yazicioğlu, who died in an extremely suspicious helicopter crash. I strongly advise my readers and everyone to seriously analyze Karaman's columns in trying to understand Erdoğan's mentality. Karaman's views on the West, democracy, secularism, etc., will also be interesting. As far as I can see, Erdoğan will not hesitate to isolate Turkey from the world if the economy is performing well.

However, unless he gets huge funding from the Gulf, Iran, Malaysia and so on, his export-oriented Independent Industrialists and Businessmen's Association (MÜSİAD) businessmen supporters will not be happy to see problems in their business relations with the West, and so Erdoğan will try to strike a delicate balance. To Westerners, he will continue to say nice things behind closed doors and will also give all sorts of concessions to the security-focused Americans, but he will continue to both use anti-Western and anti-Israeli sentiments at his public rallies and also work to intensify and deepen these sentiments.

As always, to win the presidential election, he will continue to polarize society; he will continue to invent some nebulous and abstract enemies to present himself as the victim, and he will continue to imagine a Western, postmodern Crusader attack against the bright potential leader of the Muslim World: himself. He will continue to frame the Hizmet movement as the puppet of these Western, even Judeo-Christian, dark forces, since he does not have enough time to fabricate a new enemy, as the presidential election is very close. To “prove” his case, he may need a serious clash with the West, and trying to open Hagia Sophia as a mosque will give him this opportunity. Western reactions to this attempt will skillfully and craftily be used to make his point.

I must note that there is a serious risk and even danger that his game may backfire and his voters may demand some serious and concrete anti-Western steps from him, such as removing American military bases from Turkey, cutting ties with NATO and forgetting the EU process, and reviving the late former Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan's "D-8" (the Developing Eight) projects, a union of the eight largest Muslim nations and a common Islamic currency.

İHSAN YILMAZ (Cihan/Today's Zaman)